In Italy for Love

Chapter 35

35

Alex forced air into his lungs, watched the lines on the road flit by and carefully observed the oncoming traffic as he puttered back from Udine. Only when he pulled up in his parking space out by the creek did his focus begin to crack.

This is not like Laura …

He tried to reason with himself while part of him screamed that she was gone , just like Laura, and another part of him was outraged at the comparison. He’d known Jules a matter of weeks, not the years he’d been with his wife.

The most uncomfortable thought was that she wasn’t even gone, not really. She was alive somewhere – else. Perhaps her departure was a lucky escape. She could discover her bright future, while he sat in his car, leaning on the steering wheel and staring at the creek where he’d nearly had a heart attack watching her wade in to rescue his cat.

He’d never be able to cross the Ponte del Diavolo again without thinking of her stopping and staring – or of the first time he’d seen her, when she’d impulsively asked him out to dinner and held her stubborn chin high when she’d thought he would reject her.

Rubbing his swollen eyes with a sigh and resting his forehead on his hands, he was vaguely annoyed to acknowledge that time would make everything better. He’d lived the truth of that. Even when he hadn’t wanted his life to get better, it had.

He’d held on to Laura with everything in him and he’d still accidentally fallen in love with Jules.

Jerking his head up, he blinked out of the windscreen with a shiver of panic. Had that word really just crept into his thoughts? Perhaps just because she’d said it – in her sleep last night, which didn’t really count.

There are no star-crossed lovers here – only stupid ones .

He was even more irritated that Berengario’s words came back to him right then. He was still picturing Jules standing under the arches at the station, telling him she’d stay if he asked. After everything she’d been through with Luca, she’d still been brave enough to stay.

Oh, God, should he have asked her? Should he have let her take the risk? But he hated the idea of her giving up her chances – giving up her home for his. Her relationship with Luca hadn’t even been an outlier in the statistics of couples from different countries and he’d known her such a short time to ask so much – he had so little to offer.

He heaved himself out of the car and slammed the door. There were no right answers. He should have accepted that by now, but he was back at the beginning of this new journey to acceptance and… he was a long way off acceptance.

He’d made the wrong decision.

Turning back to the car in agitation, his fingers were on the handle of the door before he stopped himself. As much as he could already feel the words on his lips – I love you. Please stay – he was terrified. What if she ended up resenting her life here? And what did he think he’d do: race the train to Austria and pluck her off the station platform? Call her and ask her to get off? He’d given her no reason to trust him.

With a growl of frustration, he turned back in the direction of the courtyard. At the door to his apartment, he remembered Arco waiting for him with a twinge of regret. In the bleakness after Laura had died, Attila had been both a painful reminder and a source of comfort, but he found little comfort in the thought of sharing his regret with Jules’s dog. He’d been foolish to think Arco would help him come to terms with her departure.

Opening the door with too much force, he was surprised when it took the little curly furball several long seconds to appear at the kitchen door and tear down the hall to him. He crouched to give the dog a thorough rub on his back and tummy, smarting from the feeling that his pack was incomplete.

Then he heard voices and froze. A cackle from Berengario. A soft admonishment from Elena. When he rounded the kitchen door, he even found Maddalena brewing tea by his stove, Stefano the tattoo artist doodling on a piece of paper and Davide sitting off to the side.

They all looked up and immediately fell silent when he walked in. He watched them warily. Nobody appeared to even breathe as they shot glances behind him at the empty doorway.

‘Is this some kind of commiseration committee? I’m not really in the mood.’

Maddalena broke the silence. ‘She left ?’

‘Of course she left. I took her to the train station! What did you think would happen? There was no alien abduction.’

‘Gesù, Maria e i santi, have you no respect for your elders, boy?’ Berengario looked ready to hit him over the head.

‘What?’ He stalked to the stove and rattled with the moka pot as loudly as he could. Now was no time for Maddalena’s sage and mauve infusion.

‘Nonno, after everything he’s done for you,’ Davide said, rolling his eyes. Now Davide was defending him? Alex was even more deeply confused.

‘You were supposed to ask her to stay!’ Berengario snapped.

‘No one told me that!’

Between the growl in the back of his throat and the gnashing of his teeth, Berengario was the wild animal in the room, not Arco. ‘You should have worked that out for yourself. Imagine how you would have reacted if we’d told you she was the best part of your future!’

‘I’m discovering how I would have reacted right now,’ Alex snapped. ‘How am I the one to promise her a future? She’s better off without me and you should understand that.’

‘You empty-headed fool!’ He added several more muttered insults in Furlan, most of them about how badly he smelled. ‘You’re just lucky your family is looking out for you.’ He took a deep breath and released it on a huff, before looking from Elena to Maddalena to Stefano with a sharp nod. ‘It’s time for plan B.’

Alex groaned. ‘Is this some kind of intervention? Can I have a coffee first, or is coffee not allowed in the war room?’

‘Sit and be quiet while we fix your life.’

‘The last time you tried to fix my life I got stranded overnight in the hills!’

Berengario straightened. ‘And look how well that turned out! If it weren’t for us, you’d still be here spending more time with accordions than people, thinking your life was over! Just imagine if she’d never come to stay here, hmm? Or if she’d moved back to the farm when I fixed the wiring?’

‘You fixed the wiring? When? Why didn’t you tell me – or her?’

‘Three weeks ago! You were already half in love with her and torturing yourself with guilt – and behaving extremely rudely, I might add. We had to take action.’

‘She could have been staying with Maddalena all this time? You made her think she was a burden on me!’

‘ You made her think that as some twisted excuse for your own feelings.’

Alex’s chest seized up and his mouth snapped shut. His hair stood on end remembering the day Berengario had turned up with the woman who’d lit his feelings on fire in what should have been a one-night stand, how he’d lashed out and felt terrible about it. He hated it when Berengario was right.

‘But you’re Laura’s grandfather!’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Jules was on the farm Laura loved, in Laura’s jacket, sleeping in my bed . Shouldn’t you have been worried she’d take Laura’s place? That I’d forget her – or at least forget some small detail of her, with Jules right in front of me?’ His voice rasped at the end, losing strength.

Berengario gripped his forearm tightly. ‘ No one will ever take Laura’s place,’ he said, his voice low and hard. ‘It’s not even possible. Do you think I loved her so little that I could replace her?’

‘That’s what you think of me!’ Alex accused, his mind racing.

This time he did get a slap to the back of his head. ‘Stupidel!’ Then another one for good measure. No wonder he’d been tempted to deck Luca, if his own grandfather-in-law cuffed him over the head. ‘You can’t replace her either. Do you think Elena is a replacement for Maddalena’s mother? Of course not! She is Elena. Laura is even more deeply etched into you than that stupid tattoo on your arm. Falling in love again doesn’t change that.’

‘But if that’s true, I belonged to someone else first; if Laura truly is so deeply etched in me, why would Jules want to stay with me?’

‘Sometimes I ask myself that,’ Berengario mumbled. ‘Did she say it was a problem that you were married before? We don’t come as naked babies into our relationships. We come with scars – sometimes we come as grizzly old men into new relationships.’

‘You’re not a grizzly old man,’ he assured Berengario.

‘Of course not! I’ve reclaimed my youth. I was talking about you . I know it hurts. I know you don’t think you’re ready. But you can’t pretend it didn’t happen anyway.’

‘You pushed us,’ he protested weakly.

‘Would you have preferred it if I helped her pack her things and move down to the farm? Left you in peace? If given the chance, maybe she would have preferred Davide! He’s certainly never been in love before.’

‘Nonno,’ Laura’s cousin grumbled. ‘If Alex was half in love after two weeks, then so was she. You can quit using me to make him jealous.’

‘That worked last time too,’ the old man pointed out. ‘But we’re not here to go over the past. We have to make a plan for the future – foolproof, this time. Stefano, thank you for bringing your designs.’

The long-haired old man shuffled a few papers in front of him. ‘Yes, since we’ve got the bay leaves, I thought something else botanical would be nice and I’ve brought a few ideas.’ Selecting a picture of what looked like an olive tree, Stefano held it up next to Alex’s arm with a thoughtful hum.

‘Yes, there’ll be time for that later,’ Berengario said. ‘Do you have those forms, Elena?’

She adjusted her reading glasses. ‘I checked again to be sure and technical draughtsman is definitely on the list of occupations allowing visas. He’ll need a translated copy of his diploma and an English test result. You have that already, yes?’

Alex managed to nod, his mouth hanging open. ‘I took the IELTS exam in England.’

‘We’ll need police clearance certificates from Italy and England, too, but I think we can fill in the form expressing interest while we wait for those. Apparently the process can take three to five months.’

‘ Three months,’ Berengario said firmly. ‘If I have to travel there myself and give those immigration officials a shake!’

‘Immigration?’

Maddalena peered over Elena’s shoulder at the sheaf of printouts from the Internet neatly stapled together. ‘The visa costs how much? ’

‘Money isn’t a problem, after the payout from Laura’s life insurance,’ Berengario said dismissively. ‘He can’t have spent it all during that first year in shock. Most importantly, I’ve contacted the Fogolar Furlan in Brisbane—’ The way he mangled the pronunciation of Jules’s home city almost made Alex laugh.

‘There’s a Fogolar Furlan in Brisbane?’ he repeated, his thoughts pleasantly diverted by the idea of Jules joining the cultural association of Friulian émigrés. She was a Furlan Volpe after all.

‘Yes, and they were very keen to help you settle in.’

‘Hang on a minute!’ Alex said, giving himself a shake. ‘What exactly is going on?’

‘We’re shipping you off to Australia, boy.’

The utter disbelief that descended on him with that statement put pressure on his lungs until he was wheezing – either with laughter or incredulity or a mixture of both.

Australia… Half the world away from his friends and family – the support network that had held him together through his darkest time.

‘Did you think I’d just turn up at her door with all my possessions on my back and ask to move in?’

‘It worked for Jules,’ Berengario pointed out.

‘That’s because Jules is brave. And tough.’ And beautiful. His throat thickened.

‘Don’t you think it’s your turn to be brave?’

His vision tunnelled as those words burrowed into his consciousness. He couldn’t go. His well-being depended on frico and tocai and Bianchera olive oil – to say nothing of his meddling family. There was an invisible barrier that would make him disintegrate if he stepped out of Friuli. He felt it. Laura had died when they’d left Friuli.

When he reached the last item on that list, he recognised it was irrational. He was afraid. But he’d enjoyed living in London before the accident had changed his life. It wouldn’t have been fair to ask Jules to stay for him, but could he be brave enough to go to her?

With a cough, he stretched his hand out to Elena. ‘Give me the papers.’ When she didn’t immediately respond, he clicked his fingers urgently until she placed them warily in his hand. ‘You too, Stefano.’

Gathering up the forms and lists and the intricate tattoo designs, he made a neat pile, tapping them on the table. ‘Thank you for your input,’ he said tightly. ‘I admit, I’ve been a few steps behind my own feelings since I met Jules.’ He paused, allowing those words to settle over him. ‘You’re also right,’ he continued softly with a self-deprecating smile, ‘I fell in love with her and I didn’t deal with it well.’

He ignored the gasps and gleeful noises of his family.

‘But if anyone is doing something to fix this, it’s got to be me.’

Looking up slowly, he met Berengario’s calculating gaze, holding it until the old man gave him a small nod and his combative posture softened. ‘You know we’ll help you with anything you need.’

‘I know.’